


Not Her Type

by WritingToKeepMySanity



Series: Punk (Newsies) Will Never Die [1]
Category: Newsies - All Media Types, Newsies!: the Musical - Fierstein/Menken
Genre: Algebra Class, Alternate Universe - College/University, F/M, Jack has a leather jacket purple hair and piercings, good luck, punk!jack
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-03
Updated: 2018-07-03
Packaged: 2019-06-05 00:55:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15158891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WritingToKeepMySanity/pseuds/WritingToKeepMySanity
Summary: Katherine wasn't sure about the boy in her College Algebra class.





	Not Her Type

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tuppenny](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tuppenny/gifts).



> For Claire, who did not specifically _ask_ for Punk!Jack, but was very enthusiastic about it :D  <3

Katherine didn’t know about the boy in her College Algebra class. The first few weeks of the semester, she warily avoided him, with his leather jacket, clunky black boots, and shock of purple hair styled in a mohawk.

She never tried to judge too harshly based on looks alone, but add all that to the permanent scowl that seemed to be on his face, and he seemed… dangerous.

So he sat in his corner, and she sat in her perfect not-quite-center-two-rows-from-the-front-seat.

That is, until one day, nearly two months into the semester, someone else was sitting in her perfect not-quite-center-two-rows-from-the-front-seat, and Katherine had to move to the back.

“ _Really_ ,” she muttered, slamming her bag in a chair. “It’s halfway through the semester, you can’t just _take my chair_ like that—”

“Well, good mornin’ ta you too, Red,” a thickly accented voice said on her right. “Ya in my seat.”

Katherine whirled around, banging her knee on the bottom of the table to see… _shit_ , she never learned his name, did she? “I–what?”

“Ya sittin’ in m’seat.” he shrugged. “S’okay, I’ll sit next ta ya. Kid in front'a me likes ta snore anyways, an’ no one sits next t’me.”

She stared at him as he sat in the empty space next to her. She thought about responding, knew she could _at least_ thank him for letting her bum his seat when she’d just been complaining about the same thing.

But their professor entered the room then, calling for attention—even though he still had to turn on his computer and actually get his stuff ready for class, which would take another five minutes—and pass around the attendance sheet, so she didn’t say anything.

But Katherine did pay attention as the boy next to her scribbled his name  with his left hand before passing it on to her, and she looked carefully over the list of names.

 _Jack Kelly_.

 

*~*~*~*~*

 

It’d been another two weeks and Katherine _still_ didn’t know about the boy—Jack Kelly—in her College Algebra class. After that first class she sat next to him, she… just kept sitting there.

Well, in the empty seat next to his, she wasn’t a seat-stealer like _some_ people.

Sitting next to Jack Kelly was interesting. For all his tough looks and scowls and air of uncaring, Jack was…

A complete, total dork.

The second class she sat next to him, he spent the entire class doodling in his notebook. Katherine couldn’t make out what exactly he was drawing, but she _thought_ she caught a glimpse of a cartoonish cat in the corner of his page.

The third class, he didn’t even pretend to listen to their professor, instead he watched Vine compilation after Vine compilation, doing his best not to crack up at “ _Uh, yeah, I sure hope it does_.”

After their fourth class, she saw him walking through the quad, carrying a pair of crutches, with another boy on his back, laughing at something he’d said.

By the fifth class, she actually talked to him.

“Aren’t you worried about not passing?” she asked him as he sat next to her.

“What? _College Algebra_?” Jack scoffed. “Pul’tzer, ‘m an art major. Ain’t gonna need it afta' December. ‘Sides, I gotta couple’a buddies who’re act’ally good at this shit, they help me.”

Katherine furrowed her brow. “How—wait, you know my name?” He’d never referred to her as anything but Red since that first day.

He snorted, raking a hand through his fading purple hair. “Ya the dean’s daughter, ‘course I know who ya are.”

She flushed. Her father was the dean, famous for cutting arts funding. Of course Jack would know him.

Ignoring him in favor digging through her backpack for her pencil bag—Journalism major or no, _she_ didn’t want to fail College Algebra—Katherine hid her surely-red face from him as he stuck an earbud in one studded ear and…

Where was her pencil bag?

“Shit,” she whispered, suddenly remembering _exactly_ where it was.

Sitting on her stack of textbooks.

On her desk.

In her dorm.

“ _Shit_.” Katherine dropped her head on her notebook. A moment later, something tapped her shoulder and she twisted her neck to see Jack holding out a pencil to her.

He shrugged as she stared at him. “Ain’t usin’ it anyways.”

“… Thanks, Jack.”

Winking at her, he turned back to his phone pull up Netflix. “Sure thing, Red.”

 

*~*~*~*~*

 

The seventh class, he wasn’t in attendance, and Katherine certainly did _not_ spend the entire class, glancing over at his chair, to see what he was watching that day.

Nope.

Not her.

 

*~*~*~*~*

 

Eighth class, she missed in favor of lying face down on her bed with a heating pad over her stomach, trying to alleviate her cramps, definitely _not_ wondering if he was checking her seat like she had the week before.

 

*~*~*~*~*

 

Ninth class was cancelled because their professor was sick, and Katherine spent the class time in the library, trying to stay on top of her reading for her Comp class, _not_ thinking about—

“‘Ay, Red.” 

 _Speak of the devil_ …

“Jack!” she said, surprised to see him. “Uh—hi!”

He slung his backpack off his shoulder, rifling through it a moment before pulling out a notebook. “Ya weren’t there last class, so I took notes f’r ya.”

Stunned, Katherine took a moment before replying. “You…?”

“Well, I tried,” Jack shrugged. “Then I showed it ta m’roomate, Crutchie, an’ Race—they’re the one’s good at math—an’ Racer said, ‘Kelly, these’re fuckin’ pitiful’ an’ then he an’ Crutchie fixed ‘em f’r me so ya got the right inf’rmation.”

“Th-Thanks, Jack.” He flipped to the page and slid the notebook towards her, and Katherine couldn’t help but feel touched. In the six classes she’d sat next him, she’d never seen him take a single note in class.

Still she offered, “I can give you my notes from the class you missed—”

Waving a hand, he dropped into the chair across from her. “Nah. Don’t need ‘em.”

“Well… thank you. For the notes,” Katherine clarified. “It won’t take me long, but if you need to go—”

“Nah, I’ll stick ‘round. Don’t got anywhere else to be. ‘Less ya uncomf’table wit’ me here…”

“No!” Katherine hoped she wasn’t blushing as she cut him off _way_ too quickly. “No,” she said, as nonchalantly as she could. “I mean, you’re fine, it’ll take me fifteen, twenty minutes, maybe.”

Smirking at her, Jack pulled his phone from his pocket, earbuds wrapped around the paint-splattered case. “Whatever ya say, Red.”

He scrolled through his phone as she began copying his notes, written in two different handwritings, one surprisingly neat and one just a little nicer than Jack’s (barely).

“I’m sorry, Crutchie and Race?” she couldn’t help but ask after a moment, thinking about the friends he'd said actually wrote the notes. Those didn't sound... like normal names, but she was learning that 'normal' wasn't—well, normal—when it came to Jack Kelly.

Jack laughed a bit, propping a foot up in the chair next to him. “We like nicknames.”

“Oh yeah? Do you have one?” she shot back.

He raised an eyebrow at her, smirking. “Copy ya notes, Red, an’ we’ll see if I tells ya.”

 

*~*~*~*~*

 

She stopped counting after that.

They started talking more than stilted pleasantries before and after class, walking to and from the classroom, exchanged numbers after the library—”In case ya miss again, Red”—and texted late into the night.

Katherine finally met the infamous Race and Crutchie, along with a whole group of rowdy, equally rough–looking boys, most of who she recognized from her various gen-ed classes.

It was something else, seeing him with his friends, especially Crutchie. His tough demeanor melted away and he was almost a completely different person, and she started seeing that side more and more.

Jack did his best to distract her during class, passing her notes or seeing how often he could mark on her arm before she noticed.

She just shrugged it off, only passed corrected notes back—his spelling was about as good as his speech and it showed—with a large smiley face underneath.

It was fun. It was comfortable. It–

It was nearly the end of the semester before she realized that she was falling for the boy in her Algebra class.

“Oh no.” Katherine said, out loud, as the realization hit her in the middle of shampooing her hair. “Oh noooo, this is _not_ happening…”

Jack Kelly was _not_ her type, he was rough and coarse and didn’t care a bit about his classes and… and caring and not nearly as tough as he appeared and a total dork and, and—

“ _No_.”

Katherine didn’t return his texts for the rest of the night, stayed locked in her dorm room, and slowly spiraled in her existential crises.

She did _not_ like Jack Kelly.

The next Algebra class, she got there early and sat in her original, perfect not-quite-center-two-rows-from-the-front-seat and tried to ignore how she could _feel_ his eyes burning a hole in the back of her head throughout the class.

The second their professor dismissed them, Katherine made a beeline for the door, hoping to beat him out the door.

Unluckily, she was stopped barely ten feet out the classroom by a determined Jack Kelly.

“Jack, I have to get to class—”

“Don’t gimme that, Pul’tzer, I know ya don’t got a class after this one.” His eyes were hard and confused. “What was that, ya not sittin’ by me t’day?”

She almost rolled her eyes, if only to get him to go away so she could make her escape. “Jack, you can _not_ seriously be upset that I didn’t next to you today.”

“I ain’t. I’m upset that ya ignored me an’ ya clearly tryin’ ta get away from me, so what the hell’s goin’ on, Kath’rine?”

Katherine set her jaw, ready to tell him off, but something in his face made her stop. She’d never seen that look on his face, something so open and… she refused to use the word vulnerable, not when Jack Kelly was concerned, not when he’d re-dyed his hair again, gotten another piercing in his left ear, but…

She couldn’t think of a better word.

Jack apparently took her silence as all the answer he needed, because he nodded curtly and started to pull away. “Yeah, okay that’s fine, whatever—”

“You’re not my type in the slightest, yet here I am, head over heels and I don’t understand it!” she finally burst out, cutting him off.

He stared at her a moment, agape, and Katherine felt her face go hot. _This is what you get for opening your mouth without thinking, idiot._

She turned to leave, but Jack grasped her wrist and pulled her back towards him.

“‘Bout damn time, Red,” he muttered, pausing a moment to make sure she wasn’t pulling away, before kissing her.

 

*~*~*~*~*

 

By their last College Algebra class, Katherine still wasn’t completely sure about the boy who sat to her left.

But she couldn’t wait to find out the rest.

**Author's Note:**

> he's such a Softie, Punk!Jack is my favorite and, yes, he will return because Punk Never Dies ;)
> 
> I'd love to know your thoughts!! I'm on tumblr @wordshakerofgallifrey <3
> 
> Comments, concerns, and critiques welcome. Peace, love, and sanity!


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